But who will take care of the tubes?

The Register was a fly on the wall at a meeting at ICANN where the USA has more or less given up control of that body in favour of more international control. It will still be an almost exclusively English-speaking commitee, and it is yet to be seen if the decision will have any real impact on most peoples use of the internet.

"In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded

that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet.

Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government

finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN,

making the organisation a more international body.

However, assistant commerce secretary John Kneuer, the US official in charge of such matters, also

made clear that the US was still determined to keep control of the net's root zone file - at least in